Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church

Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church is a practitioner-scholar with a lifelong interest in governance processes that have run amok.  She has significant experience in peacebuilding, governance, anti-corruption, evaluation and learning across the Balkans, West and East Africa. She currently serves as the Executive Director of Besa Global, where she also co-leads the Corruption, Justice & Legitimacy (CJL) Program.  In this capacity she has pioneered the application of systems thinking to corruption analysis and the role of social norms as a driver of corrupt practices.  Cheyanne taught on the intersection of conflict and corruption as well as program design, monitoring and evaluation in fragile contexts at the Fletcher School, Tufts University for 15 years.  Prior to this, as the first Director of Evaluation for Search for Common Ground she developed the organisation’s initial strategy to institutionalize an evidence and learning culture and practice.  Her interest in understanding peacebuilding effectiveness started during her role as the Director of Policy & Evaluation at INCORE, University of Ulster. She has had the privilege of working in an advisory capacity with a range of organizations such as ABA/ROLI, CDA, ICRC, IDRC, UN Peacebuilding Fund and the US State Department. She can be commonly found in the Canadian Rockies with her fierce daughters and gem of a husband.